John Stuart Mill walks into a bar and meets reality[1]
It is quite rare for philosophical theories to be comprehensively disproved by reality. This is especially true for modern thinkers like John Stuart Mill, the first self-described liberal, whose ideas still exert enormous influence on our society.
Yet, a strong case can be made that his key arguments on freedom of speech are outdated at best. Mill argues that all worldviews and opinions – including the core democratic ones on human equality, popular governance, or even on wrongness of slavery – must always be “vigorously and earnestly contested”, or otherwise they will be held “in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of [their] rational grounds”, while “the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct.” (Mill, 1859, p. 93) Thus, to keep all our beliefs in their best possible form, we should welcome the situation when they are challenged, as it provides us with an occasion to again demonstrate their strongest features, which would otherwise be forgotten or lost. In other words, when the views of lunatics and extremists are brought to light and openly challenged, an opportunity presents itself to publicly undermine their worldviews, destroy their supposed arguments, and generally show the public how hideous, unpalatable or simply wrong their beliefs really are.
So much for Mill’s traditional liberal argument. In practice, however, this is not how argumentative exchanges usually play out, especially in contemporary media environment. For example, Giulia Terzian and Inés Corbalán have recently analyzed how a large media space afforded to the deniers of climate change has shaped the public perceptions of this critical issue. They have shown that once a reputable media outlet organizes a debate between, for example, an expert from IPCC and a climate change denier, an almost automatic assumption from the point of view of an uninformed (or largely uninformed) viewer is to see this as an instance of expert disagreement. This comes with two connected, entirely natural presuppositions: (1) The issue itself is not clear, as, apparently, even the experts disagree; (2) Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Mill’s view that in an argumentative exchange the strongest and best supported point of view will prevail is therefore questionable. In fact, the opposite is often the case. If a reputable view gets to be discussed at the same table with some far-fetched speculation (be it conspiracy theory, political propaganda, or pseudoscience), it is the reputable view which clearly suffers whereas the speculation gets a credibility boost, as its relevance has been confirmed by its very inclusion at the table.
The same is true in the case of political extremism. When extremists are presenting their views either on the parliamentary floor or, perhaps more urgently, on a widely viewed television network, the very structure of such argumentative exchange makes it so that their beliefs and values get to be seen as a normal part of the political environment. While many people might strongly disagree with them or even find their views repulsive, this is offset by their incurred status of reasonable disputants and by the framing of the argumentation exchange. If we give five minutes to Hitler and five minutes to the Jews, a natural assumption stemming from the structure of such argumentation exchange will be that this is a reasonable disagreement, both sides have legitimate grievances and the truth is probably somewhere is the middle.
This constitutes a problem. While we should be aiming at limiting the influence of extremist or deranged views, democratic politics and media sphere often creates an environment for them to thrive.
And thrive they do.
Matej Cíbik
References
Mill, J. S. (1859). On Liberty. The Walter Scott Publishing.
G. Terzian, I. Corbalán. For the sake of public argument: sincere and manufactured objections in public argumentation (forthcoming)
[1] This is an abbreviated, edited excerpt from the paper „Elected extremists, political communication and the limits of containment“, forthcoming in Topoi as a part of a special edition on „Argumentation and Politics“.